For Essam Genedi, a car washer at an outdoor parking lot in Dubai, working in the middle of the day becomes impossible in a Gulf region with extreme temperatures as the world faces a major heatwave.
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“This summer is a bit more difficult than other years. “We just can’t work between 12 and 3 or 3:30 p.m.,” he admits to AFP, still wearing a cap at the beginning of the evening.
The delivery man at a restaurant, Mohamed Ragab, has no choice but to ride his motorcycle back and forth through the city in the oppressive midday heat, but fearing for his health, he tries as best he can to “avoid sun damage “. .
“It’s hard for us and everyone who works outside the office,” he says on a street where almost nobody drives by, except in air-conditioned cars that rush by.
The United Arab Emirates, host of the next UN climate conference COP28 in Dubai, are experiencing extremely hot and heavy summers, the thermometer shows between 45 and 50 °C.
But in recent days, “an increase in relative humidity combined with already high temperatures gives the impression that the temperature is higher than it actually is,” Ahmed Habib of the National Center for Meteorology told AFP.
The perceived temperatures then fluctuate “regionally between 55 and 60 °C,” he assures.
Despite skepticism from environmental campaigners, COP28 will take place in November in 30C winter temperatures as several Gulf countries are among the top exporters of fossil fuels, industries that contribute significantly to global warming.
“Thermal Stress”
The region, known for its penchant for excess, from shiny luxury cars to huge, air-conditioned skyscrapers, is likely to be hit hard as extreme heat linked to climate change is expected to make some areas uninhabitable in the long term, experts say. .
These temperatures are already complicating the great Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca in western Saudi Arabia. At the end of June, the Saudi authorities reported more than 2,000 victims of “heat stress” during the Hajj, without giving details of the number of deaths.
The Gulf States rarely mention the human consequences of extreme heat, especially among the millions of poor foreign workers who are more at risk.
Bahrain is a small island in the Arabian Gulf between Qatar and Saudi Arabia and has a particularly high level of humidity.
Humidity was 83 percent in early July and could even surpass 90 percent as of Friday, with maximum temperatures of between 42 and 45C, according to forecasts by the Meteorology Department.
In a press release, this government agency attributes these extreme weather conditions to “monsoons, or the weak activity of northwest winds, which typically begin in June and last through mid-July.”
“Cultivating the Desert”
Since the beginning of the month, Bahrain has recorded an average temperature of 38°C, while the hottest July at 36.9°C dates back to 2017 and 2020, according to the authorities.
The record could therefore be broken in 2023 if the average does not fall after the monsoon season.
Further north, between Iraq and Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, an oil-rich state that is used to temperatures of 50°C in summer, is in one of the hottest regions in the world.
“The rise in temperature over the past year has been significant,” Essa Ramadan, a renowned Kuwaiti climate expert, told AFP, referring to forecasts for this peak summer “which could reach 50C in parts of Kuwait and in the shadow of its neighbors.
“Most Arab Gulf countries are being hit by unusually strong heat waves,” the expert stresses, urging them to “adapt”, particularly by trying to “cultivate desert areas to mitigate the unusual rise in temperature”.
In recent years, these wealthy monarchies have invested heavily in alternative energy and greening projects in a particularly arid region, yet most observers remain skeptical about their true desire to fight global warming.